D&D 5E In your Years of Gaming, How many Psionic Characters did you See played

[Sword of Spirit]

I guess I can see how there is a similarity to the warlord thing now. The reason I'm not interested in a warlord is because I don't think it has enough tradition as a class in D&D and it doesn't feel like it "fits" in some difficult to articulate way. The latter is probably even a bigger deal than the former, since I'm okay with sorcerers, warlocks, and even artificers (at least for Eberron). But yeah, that is sort of what the arguments against a psion come down to aren't they (even though they don't apply to Psion for me)?

That being said, if they created a warlord that got past that "doesn't feel like it fits" thing I wouldn't be opposed to using it. I'm sure that's part of what they're trying to do with psionics. Find a way to put it into the edition while getting past that negativity some people have.

The funny thing is, I actually think they are taking the right overall approach in trying to figure out how to do it:
-Find out what people want out of psionics
-Find out what people don't want out of psionics.
-Make sure it's balanced and works well with the rest of the game (a clearly identified source of some people's formative negativity towards it).
-Make sure it is distinct enough from other parts of the game to be interesting.
-But avoid requiring a massive cognitive investment (whole book or giant new system) for people to add it to their games.

They just haven't figured it out yet. (But I hope they've caught on that a Psion class is essential to it.)

 

[wingsandsword]

I'll admit that I'm not really up on 5th edition and it's culture, I basically dropped out of D&D culture when 4th edition came out. . .

. . .but why would it not being used by a majority of players be a reason to not publish a book?

Since when is "it has it's own book" a downside? D&D has had books or classes that were niche for decades, you'd have to go back to 1st edition with its handful of hardbacks to get away from that. Is that seriously the mindset WotC is in now?

As someone who's looking at 5e and thinking of maybe trying to learn it, this idea is rather off-putting and frankly baffling. Though that does explain many of the huge gaps and shortcomings that 5e has, like a total lack of epic-level support.

"Hey, we know that you and a significant chunk of fans really want this. . .but since a majority of fans wouldn't use it or don't like it, we're not going to publish it.". . .when the heck has THAT been the publishing mindset for D&D?

 

[AaronOfBarbaria]

. . .but why would it not being used by a majority of players be a reason to not publish a book?

"Hey, we know that you and a significant chunk of fans really want this. . .but since a majority of fans wouldn't use it or don't like it, we're not going to publish it.". . .when the heck has THAT been the publishing mindset for D&D?

Putting together a book cost time and money, and that means a book has to hit a particular sales level to be worth what was put into making it.

It is a recent change of policy, being only since 5th edition's launch, but WotC no longer feels it to be worth it to put out books they believe will not make their own costs back and hope that other books that perform well will cover - so they only publish material they believe will actually appeal to the majority of the player base.

Kind of a "the way things have been done for decades hasn't really worked, so let's try something different" sort of thing.

 

[Jd Smith1]

Putting together a book cost time and money, and that means a book has to hit a particular sales level to be worth what was put into making it.

It is a recent change of policy, being only since 5th edition's launch, but WotC no longer feels it to be worth it to put out books they believe will not make their own costs back and hope that other books that perform well will cover - so they only publish material they believe will actually appeal to the majority of the player base.

Kind of a "the way things have been done for decades hasn't really worked, so let's try something different" sort of thing.

Sounds like basic business practice. It makes no sense to publish at a loss.

From the results of this poll, such a book would be a loss. 1.5% says its used all the time, 18.5% said it wasn't rare.

20% of the market share, assuming every interested player becomes a sale, and none just borrow the book from someone at the table or download the pdf from a share site.

There's no profit to be had, even if 100% of those interested do the right thing.

 

[Viking Bastard]

I saw a few in 3e, but that's it. We were kinda into The Psionic Handbook for a bit after it came out.

 

[MGibster]

I dislike psionics in my fantasy settings. I know for some people such a statement is equivalent to kicking a puppy so I want to make something clear; it's okay if you like psionics in your game. It's just a preference on my part. I'm sure part of the reason psionics were rarely used in my games was because the rules for them were terrible for so many years. The only D&D games I played in where psionics were regularly employed was Dark Sun. And while I had fond memories of the setting you could leave out the psionics entirely so far as I'm concerned.

 

[AaronOfBarbaria]

In my experience the reasons people treat someone not liking psionics like "kicking a puppy" comes down to the phrasing. Nobody really cares what your preference is, but they do care if you are saying a thing they like isn't just not your taste but is "terrible" as if your opinion is objective fact.

 

[Tonguez]

Soul knife

and I did a Ghoul psychic warrior for a one off

the others none

 

[was]

I've seen maybe 4 or 5 over the years

 

[Hussar]

/snip

It seems likely that the reason psionics is getting preferential treatment over warlord is because WotC want to eventually do Dark Sun.

Well, now, that's true. But, again, there is a caveat. When WotC did that setting survey, it was what, 2016? 2017? Something like that. The market has tripled in size since then. I am kind of wondering how important Dark Sun is anymore. It would seem to me that the percentage of gamers who actually remember Dark Sun is shrinking daily.